Global Environment Outlook 4

The GEO-4 temporal baseline is 1987, the year in which the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published its seminal report, Our Common Future . The Brundtland Commission was established in 1983, under UN General Assembly resolution 38/161 to look at critical environment and development challenges. It was established at a time of an unprecedented rise in pressures on the global environment, and when grave predictions about the human future were becoming commonplace.

The year 2007 was a major milestone in marking what was achieved in the area of sustainable development and recording efforts – from local to global – to address various environmental challenges. It will be:

• Twenty years since the launch of Our Common Future , which defined sustainable development as a blueprint to address our interlinked environment and development challenges.
• Twenty years since the UNEP Governing Council adopted the “Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond”, to implement the major findings of the WCED and set the world on a sustainable development path.
• Fifteen years since the World Summit on Environment and Development (the Rio Earth Summit), adopted Agenda 21, providing the foundation on which to build intra- and intergenerational equity.
• Five years since the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002, which adopted the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.